Notes

1. From 1679 to 1686, rough notes of the servant indentures entered in the Bristol Tolzey appear intermittently in the records of the Mayor’s Court. Between 1 September 1679 and 29 September 1680, notations of one hundred fifty-seven servant indentures were made in the Mayor’s Court Action Book: BRO, MS 04355 (6). A further thirty-one such entries appear in the same source between 30 September 1680 and 12 January 1681, a very low total for this season. There are no more entries until 26 April 1684, whence they run to 12 June 1686: BRO, MS 04356 (1). Even these records appear to be incomplete. [BACK]

3. Based on PRO, E 190/1138/1. In 1671–72, one hundred fifty-nine vessels totaling 13,387 tons were recorded by customs officials as entering Bristol from European or Atlantic ports. Seventy-two (45.28 percent) had come from American waters. They amounted to 7,830 tons, or 58.49 percent of the total. In the same year one hundred vessels, totaling 9,159 tons, left Bristol bound for European or American destinations. Forty-seven (47.00 percent), totaling 5,630 tons (61.47 percent), were headed for the American colonies. On later developments in the organization of colonial trade, see Jacob M. Price and Paul G. E. Clemens, “A Revolution of Scale in Overseas Trade: British Firms in the Chesapeake Trade, 1675–1775,” JEcH 47 (1987): 1–44. [BACK]

4. For purposes of this analysis only the data recorded in the two volumes of the Bristol Register, BRO, MSS 04220 (1–2), have been used. These volumes were redacted by clerks from original entry books kept by the Bristol Mayor’s Court. The entries end in August 1679, which means that the last complete year is 1677–78. Since the purpose of this analysis is to test the reliability of the record, the data from the original entry books for the years 1680–1686 have not been included in the analysis. [BACK]

5. Henry Gemery, “Emigration from the British Isles to the New World, 1630–1700: Inferences from Colonial Populations,” Research in Economic History: A Research Annual 5 (1980): 215–16. At best this analysis can only suggest the rough dimension of the change, since Gemery gives his totals by the decade. [BACK]

6. For 1655–1662 we find a correlation of m-.698 (significant at .05) with population as measured by E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 532. That is, migration from Bristol in these years fluctuated inversely with increases or decreases in England’s population as a whole. But after 1662 the correlation is only m-.249 (n.s.). For the whole period from 1655 to 1678 we get a correlation of m+.464, which is significant only at .25 and should be discounted. But we should not make too much of these calculations, since Wrigley and Schofield give estimates of population for England only, whereas a considerable number of the migrants from Bristol were Welsh. In addition, given the limited number of years in our series, our results, even for 1655–1662, should be taken only as suggestive, not definitive. [BACK]

10. Charles Wilson, Profit and Power: A Study of England and the Dutch Wars (London: Longmans, Green, 1957), chaps. 8–9. It is always difficult to judge the effect of war on commerce. In the Second Dutch War the Bristolians complained loudly of their losses at sea during 1664–65: PRO, SP 29/133/66. But in November 1665 at least thirty and possibly forty-five ships sailed from the port to the West Indies (PRO, SP 29/136/98), and in the following July a well-laden convoy of twenty-three vessels, mostly Bristol-owned, arrived in the port (PRO, SP 29/163/128; see also PRO, SP 29/175/3, and PRO, SP 29/ 177/39). Although the Third Dutch War seems to have made a much more noticeable impression on servant migration than did the second, it did so only during one year, that of 1673. In the previous and following years the war seems not to have damaged the trade to a significant degree: see Table 29. [BACK]

12. T. F. Reddaway, The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (London: Jonathan Cape, 1940), pp. 112ff. It might be noted, however, that if the fire had only a minor effect, the plague may well have had a greater, for Bristol established a quarantine for all strangers entering the town and cancelled its fairs during this outbreak: see Latimer, Annals, pp. 334–35; Robert Steele, ed., A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations of the Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns, 2 vols. [Bibliotheca Lindesiana, vols. 5–6] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), vol. 1, nos. 3424 and 3446. [BACK]

14. Phelps-Brown and Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables,” pp. 179–96. I am grateful to Philip Hoffman for his advice in analyzing these data and interpreting the results. [BACK]

15. Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, pp. 174–91, 210–12, 412. [BACK]

16. For a strong argument on the significance of real wages in determining emigration rates, see Menard, “British Migration,” pp. 108–9, 108n. 18, and Bean and Thomas, “Adoption of Slave Labor,” pp. 390–98. The analysis offered by Bean and Thomas is fraught with difficulties: see Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, p. 265n. 16. Menard’s analysis is also somewhat problematic. The real-wage figures he employs are based on harvest years: see Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, p. 312. But the migration figures Menard takes from Galenson and from Abbott Emerson Smith are for calendar years: see Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, pp. 220–21, 224–25; Smith, Colonists in Bondage, p. 309. For a more general critique of the use of the Phelps-Brown/Hopkins indexes to explain trends in the preindustrial economy, see Wrigley and Schofield, Population History of England, pp. 312–13, 431–35, 480–81, 638–41; Peter H. Lindert, “English Population, Wages, and Prices: 1541–1913,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 15 (1985): 618; David Loschky, “Seven Centuries of Real Income per Wage Earner Reconsidered,” Economica 57 (1980): 459–65; Donald Woodward, “Wage Rates and Living Standards in Pre-Industrial England,” Past and Present, no. 91 (May 1981): 28–45; David M. Palliser, “Tawney’s Century: Brave New World or Malthusian Trap?” EcHR, 2d ser., 35 (1982): 349–51; Menard, “British Migration,” p. 108n. 18. [BACK]

18. Menard, “The Tobacco Industry in the Chesapeake Colonies,” p. 135. In July 1666, to give an example, nineteen ships, all Bristol-owned and totaling 2,770 tons, arrived in Bristol carrying tobacco. Most of these vessels must have carried some servants on the outward voyage the previous autumn: see PRO, SP 29/163/128 (20 July 1666); see also PRO, SP 29/133/66, 29/163/127, 29/164/23. [BACK]

20. Campbell, “Social Origins of Some Early Americans,” p. 87; Campbell, “Mildred Campbell’s Response,” pp. 527–28. David Galenson has challenged this view by arguing, correctly, that Campbell has not “demonstrated” the presence of any Quakers among the servants on the Bristol lists. But the matter should not end with this negative criticism. As we shall see, there is good evidence to suggest that Campbell has a point. [BACK]

22. Letter of Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, 14 August 1656, Friends’ House Library, London, Swarthmore MSS 1/65. In the 1630s Dorothy Kelly, one of the founders of Bristol sectarianism, whose family were among the early Quakers there, had used her house on the High Street for this same purpose: Joseph Fletcher, The History of the Revival and Progress of Independency in England since the Period of the Reformation, 4 vols. (London: John Snow, 1847–1848), vol. 3, pp. 197–98; David Masson, The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical and Literary History of His Time, new and rev. ed., 6 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1894), vol. 2, p. 581. [BACK]

23. Letter of George Bishop to Margaret Fell, 27 October 1656, Friends’ House Library, London, Swarthmore MSS 1/188; George Bishop, The Throne of Truth Exalted over the Powers of Darkness (London, 1656); George Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism, 2d rev. ed., ed. H. J. Cadbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), pp. 253, 566. Besse names only two Bristol sufferers in the years 1657–1659, both of whom were punished for failing to swear the burgess oath and for refusing to remove their hats before the magistrates: Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, p. 42. For an overview of the early history of dissent in Bristol, see J. G. Fuller, The Rise and Progress of Dissent in Bristol: Chiefly in Relation to the Broadmead Church (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1840); Russell Mortimer, Early Bristol Quakerism: The Society of Friends in the City, 1654–1700 (Historical Association, Bristol Branch, pamphlet no. 17, 1967); Hayden, ed., Records, pp. 16ff.; see also Jonathan Barry, “The Parish in Civic Life: Bristol and Its Churches, 1640–1750,” in Susan Wright, ed., Parish, Church and People: Local Studies of Lay Religion, 1350–1750 (London: Hutchinson, 1988), pp. 158ff. [BACK]

24. For Quaker complaints of persecution in this period, see, e.g., John Crook et al., A Declaration of the People of God in scorn called Quakers to all Magistrates and People (London, 1659), signed by Dennis Hollister of Bristol, among others; Bishop, Mene Tekel. But in contrast see Besse’s account of the actual persecutions in London and Middlesex, for example, Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, pp. 361–65. [BACK]

26. BRO, MS 04376, f. 132v; BRO, Common Council Proceedings, vol. 6, p. 12; HMC, Report on the MSS of F. W. Leybourne-Popham, p. 160; PRO, SP 29/9/41, 42, 29/30/67; letter of William Dewsbury to Margaret Fell (February 1660?), Friends’ House Library, London, Swarthmore MSS 4/134; [Richard Ellsworth], A Letter of the Apprentices of the City of Bristol (London, 1660); William Sewel, The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers, 2d ed. (London: J. Sowle, 1725), pp. 232–33; Seyer, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 507–9; Latimer, Annals, pp. 290–92; Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, pp. 364–66; Barry Reay, “Popular Hostility towards Quakers in Mid-Seventeenth Century England,” Social History 5 (1980): 403–4; Reay, The Quakers and the English Revolution, pp. 73–75. The outcries against the Quakers in this year were closely tied to discontent over the depressed state of trade, as is revealed in the Letter of the Apprentices of the City of Bristol, and to a sense of impending release from the social restraints imposed during the Interregnum. Just before Shrove Tuesday in 1660, for example, the mayor and aldermen issued orders to the apprentices and other young men of the town banning cockthrowing, to avoid tumults (BRO, MS 04376, f. 134r–v) and just before the king’s restoration in May they issued orders to prevent their playing “farthing pitt & lead pitt” while taking the name of the Lord in vain, and their setting up maypoles (BRO, MS 04273, f. 135r–v). On the role of the Quakers in the events leading to the Restoration, see W. A. Cole, “The Quakers in Politics, 1652–1660,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1955, chaps. 3–8; W. A. Cole, “The Quakers and the English Revolution,” in Trevor Aston, ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1957), pp. 358–76; J. F. Maclear, “Quakerism and the End of the Interregnum,” Church History 19 (1950): 240–70; Barry Reay, “The Quakers, 1659, and the Restoration of the Monarchy,” History 63 (1978): 193–215; Reay, The Quakers and the English Revolution, pp. 81–100. [BACK]

27. Hayden, ed., Records, p. 127. For persecutions in London in this period and their effects on dissenters there, see Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), chap. 4. [BACK]

34. PRO, SP 29/28/87, 29/34/68, 29/43/26; see also Stat. Realm, 13 Car. II st. i c. 6. A portion of Roe’s stock was later returned to him, however, for, as Secretary Nicholas said to the Bristol magistrates, the king did not mean to disturb him in the innocent pursuit of his calling. Nevertheless, at Nicholas’s urging Roe was forced to give a weekly accounting of his purchases and sales: [Nicholas] to the mayor of Bristol, 5 October 1661, PRO, SP 29/43/25. For discussion of the Venner plot, see C. Burrage, “The Fifth Monarchy Insurrections,” English Historical Review 25 (1910): 739–45; Sir W. Foster, “Venner’s Rebellion,” London Topographical Record 18 (1942): 30–33; P. G. Rogers, The Fifth Monarchy Men (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 110–22; Bernard Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), pp. 199–200; Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil, pp. 50–57. [BACK]

40. CJ, vol. 8, pp. 2, 246; Stat. Realm, 14 Car. II c. 1. The bill against the Quakers and the bill against vagrants were so closely tied in the minds of the MPs that the two measures were sent to the same committee after the second readings: CJ, vol. 8, pp. 252, 285. [BACK]

42. CJ, vol. 8, pp. 346, 451, 491, 509; Hutton, The Restoration, p. 210; A Relation of the Inhumane and Barbarous sufferings of the people called Quakers in the City of Bristol (London, 1665), pp. 76–77. The principal author of this work is probably George Bishop. As a member of the Cavalier Parliament, Sir John Knight sat on seven committees concerned with ecclesiastical legislation. Only ten other MPs sat on as many or more such committees: see Paul Seaward, The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime, 1661–1667 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 328. Later in Charles II’s reign, Knight’s Anglican and anti-popery views made him an active exclusionist: see Barry, “Politics of Religion,” pp. 172–73. On Knight’s political career, see Basil Duke Henning, ed., The House of Commons, 1660–1690, 3 vols. (London: History of Parliament Trust, 1983), vol. 2, pp. 692–96. [BACK]

44. BRO, Common Council Proceedings, vol. 6, p. 36. This complaint found its way into one of the petitions drafted by the Common Council in April 1661 requesting a confirmation of the city’s charters. There was some question, however, whether it was politically wise to include this complaint in the petition, and a second petition was drawn without it; it was left to the mayor, Henry Creswick, a Merchant Venturer, to decide, after he had scouted the territory in London, which of the two to use. [BACK]

46. On the searches, see BRO, MS 04220 (1), ff. 351r–352r, 355v–367v, 482r–497v. For Knight’s attempt at legislation, see CJ, vol. 8, p. 401. The bill originated in the Commons just before the recess of the summer of 1661. It may have been a response to complaints in London about the stealing of children for transportation to Virginia, which surfaced the year before: Acts of the Privy Council (Colonial), vol. 1, pp. 296–97; see also Jeaffreson, ed., Middlesex County Records, vol. 3, pp. 302, 303, 306, 315. The bill was left to Alderman Fowkes of London to draft. It received its first reading in January 1662 and its second reading and commitment in April: CJ, vol. 8, pp. 316, 349, 401. But although the committee received further instructions from the House, it did not produce the bill for a final vote. For a connection between this bill and revenge against Civil War enemies, see CJ, vol. 8, pp. 403, 412. Knight remained interested in the matter of child-stealing throughout most of his long parliamentary career, serving on committees when legislation was introduced in 1670 and 1673: CJ, vol. 9, pp. 138, 251, 286. On each occasion the bill failed, sometimes because it could not pass the House of Lords. [BACK]

47. PRO, SP 29/57/71. The Long Parliament’s ordinance of May 1645 no longer, of course, had any force after the Restoration. This request of the mayor, however, did not, as far as I can determine, result in the grant of any new authority to the Bristol Corporation. [BACK]

49. Acts of Assembly passed in the Island of Barbadoes from 1648, to 1718 (London: J. Baskett, 1721), p. 12. On the “Royalism” of the elites in the colonial Chesapeake region, especially Virginia, see David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 207–25; on the political effects of the Restoration on the colonies in general, see Stephen Saunders Webb, The Governors-General: The English Army and the Definition of Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Alison Gilbert Olson, Anglo-American Politics, 1660–1775: The Relationship between Parties in England and Colonial America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), chap. 2; Philip S. Haffenden, “The Anglican Church in Restoration Politics,” in Smith, ed., Seventeenth-Century America, pp. 166–91. [BACK]

50. CSP (Colonial) (1661–1668), no. 24; Acts passed in the Island of Barbadoes, p. 12. The impetus for this order and legislation appears to have been the royal proclamation of 10 January 1661, suppressing conventicles in England and requiring persons found at them to take the oath of allegiance: Steele, ed., Bibliography of Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, no. 3278. During this same year, the island’s legislature passed an act requiring that morning and evening prayers be said by the head of every household and that all those who lived within two miles of a parish church attend morning and evening services there: Acts passed in the Island of Barbadoes, pp. 12–13. [BACK]

51. Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 2, p. 279. In the following year difficulties for dissenters only increased when the island established a tithe on all landowners for support of the parish clergy, for everywhere it appeared the tithe was anathema to the Quakers and to many other nonconformist groups: Acts passed in the Island of Barbadoes, pp. 20–22; Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 2, pp. 280–87. On the dissenters and the tithe, see Margaret James, “The Political Importance of the Tithe Controversy in the English Revolution,” History 26 (1941): 1–18; Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 13, 293–95, 298, 307–8, 316; Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, pp. 78–79, 82–83, 152, 156–57, 189, 196, 244; Barry Reay, “Quaker Opposition to Tithes, 1652–1660,” Past and Present, no. 86 (February 1980): 98–120. For a Bristol Quaker’s view of the tithe, see Thomas Speed, Christs Innocency Pleaded against the Cry of the Chief Priests (London, 1656), pp. 10–11. [BACK]

53. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: being A Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the year 1619, 13 vols. (Richmond: Samuel Pleasants, Junior, 1809–1823), vol. 1, pp. 532–33. [BACK]

54. See Henry R. McIlwaine, The Struggles of Protestant Dissenters for Religious Toleration in Virginia (Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, 12th ser., 1894, part 4), pp. 20–21; Sewel, Rise of the Christian People Called Quakers, pp. 264–65; Bowden, Society of Friends in America, vol. 1, pp. 347–49. McIlwaine says that no Quakers appear to have suffered under the act and suggests that this may have been due to the effect of the Declaration of Breda. But for evidence of such persecution, see The Lower Norfolk County Virginia Antiquary 3 (1901): 103–6, 138–46; Jones et al., Quakers in the American Colonies, pp. 273–74. The Bristol Register shows that the leading Quaker traders in the city, such as Speed and Bullock, continued to ship servants to Virginia in the early 1660s, but of course these emigrants may not themselves have been Quakers. [BACK]

55. Hening, ed., Statutes at Large, vol. 2, p. 37. In 1661 Virginia received the same instructions on church settlement as had Barbados, but these may not have arrived in the colony before the end of the legislative session of March, 1661: see CSP (Colonial) (1661–1668), no. 24; Edward D. Neill, Virginia Carolorum: The Colony under the Rule of Charles the First and Second, a.d.1625–a.d.1685 (Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell’s Sons, 1886), pp. 282–83; see also George M. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church and the Conditions under Which It Grew, 2 vols. (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1947–1952), vol. 1, chap. 15; Fischer, Albion’s Seed, pp. 232–36. [BACK]

58. PRO, SP 29/56/134; Neill, Virginia Carolorum, pp. 285–86; Bowden, Society of Friends in America, vol. 1, pp. 344ff.; William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, 2 vols., first ed. 1857 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1966), vol. 1, pp. 255, 427; in general see Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, vol. 1, pp. 191–98. In September 1662 the Council of Foreign Plantations ordered the continuance of the policies of church government already instituted in the colony, but at the same time instructed Berkeley not to molest men solely for religion, provided they “be content with a quiet and peaceably enjoying of it, not giving therein offense or scandall to the Government”: Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 3 (1895–96): 15; Neill, Virginia Carolorum, pp. 292–93. The council’s remarks suggest a desire to encourage some nonconformists to continue to people the colony, but since the Quakers were not thought to be peaceable or to act without offense to the government, probably they were not included. Nevertheless, see McIlwaine, Struggles of Protestant Dissenters, pp. 22–23. [BACK]

61. Beverley, Present State of Virginia, p. 68; see also Hening, ed., Statutes at Large, vol. 2, p. 198; Jones et al., The Quakers in the American Colonies, pp. 274–75. These conditions account for the specific exclusion of Virginia as a place to send those convicted of violating the Conventicle Act of 1664: Stat. Realm, 16 Car. II, c. 4; see also Hening, ed., Statutes at Large, vol. 2, p. 510. [BACK]

75. Ibid., pp. 12–36; Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, p. 47. Knight claimed to initiate the campaign after receiving the Privy Council’s order to do so, but according to the Quakers this order in fact was solicited by Knight in a letter reporting the city in danger from them: A Relation, pp. 16, 24–25, 32. [BACK]

79. BRO, MS 04417 (2), ff. 122v–124r; Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, p. 51. According to the Quakers, Knight had publicly stated that with the passage of the act “he now hoped to send four Hundred Quakers out of the Land before the Expiration of his Mayoralty”: Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, p. 51. [BACK]

80. BRO, MS 04417 (2), ff. 107r–121v; Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, p. 51, and vol. 2, pp. 637–38; A Relation, pp. 83–125; Bishop, A Manifesto, esp. pp. 20–27; Hayden, ed., Records, pp. 118–20; Sewel, Rise of the Christian People Called Quakers, p. 424. Sewel suggests that some of those guilty of a third offense were redeemed by kinsmen who were not Quakers but who paid the £100 fine mentioned in the statute: ibid., p. 430. [BACK]

84. PRO, SP 29/94/20. See also PRO, SP 29/92/110; McGrath, ed., Merchants and Merchandise, p. 155n. Ellsworth’s animosity to the sectaries possibly was enhanced by the business disputes he had with William Bullock in the 1650s: see ibid., pp. 21–22. [BACK]

88. CSP (Colonial) (1661–1668), nos. 391, 520. Sir Humphrey Hooke was the grandson of Alderman Humphrey Hooke, whom we have met. Sir Humphrey was high sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1661. He was elected for Bristol to the Cavalier Parliament, but withdrew in favor of Lord Ossory. When Ossory was raised to the peerage in 1666, Hooke reclaimed the seat: Latimer, Annals, p. 305. For Hooke’s connections in Barbados, see CSP (Colonial) (1661–1668), nos. 141, 1121, 1437. Robert Vickris was an officer in the militia during the Interregnum and a common councillor from 1650 to November 1662, when he withdrew or was ousted: PRO, SP 18/220/70i, 25/76A/33; BRO, Common Council Proceedings, vol. 6, pp. 7–8. See also BL, Stowe MS 185, ff. 157v–158r; Beaven, Lists, pp. 201, 311; Mortimer, ed., Minute Book, pp. 218–19. [BACK]

89. A Relation, p. 13; Mortimer, ed., Minute Book, pp. 216, 222; BRO, MS 04439 (4), f. 78v. Yeamans was the son of John Yeamans, brewer, and a nephew of William Yeamans, scrivener. The latter’s family provided one of the first contingents of the separatists in Bristol when the Broadmead church was formed in 1640 and later split from the Baptists to form the first Quaker group in the city: see Hayden, ed., Records, pp. 13, 84–90. Ann Yeamans, the daughter of William the scrivener, first married Robert Yeamans, merchant, who in 1643, as we know, became a martyr for King Charles I for attempting to turn Bristol over to Prince Rupert. She later married Thomas Speed, who adopted her children and brought them up in his household. John Yeamans, Robert’s brother, was also involved in the 1643 plot but was not executed. After a period of time in prison, he emigrated to Barbados and soon became one of the most important people on the island. Later he served as governor of Carolina: see “Sir John Yeamans” in Dictionary of American Biography. For an account of the 1643 plot, see above, pp. 238–41, and Seyer, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 341ff. The Robert Yeamans who was active in Restoration politics was a Royalist supporter in the Interregnum: see David Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy in England, 1649–60 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), p. 264. He was a significant colonial trader as well: CSP (Colonial) (1574–1660), pp. 350, 406. He has been identified as the son of Robert the martyr (see Latham, ed., Bristol Charters, 1509–1899, p. 42n. 3), but this is an error; he was a close cousin. [BACK]

90. A Relation, p. 35. See also Some Reasons Briefly Suggested which have Prevailed with the Dissenters in Bristol to Continue Their Open Meetings, however Persecuted or Disturbed (London, 1675); Barry, “Politics of Religion,” p. 169. [BACK]

91. PRO, SP 25/94/87. Knight twice refused Common Council membership in the Interregnum: Beaven, Lists, p. 299. Knight’s sister-in-law was Joyce Warren, wife of Mathew Warren, who had been sheriff in 1639–40, and daughter-in-law of the Mathew Warren whom we have met as mayor in 1633–34. As we know, she was a leading figure among the Quakers in the 1660s: A Relation, p. 74. [BACK]

93. A Relation, pp. 53–54, 65; Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, pp. 48–49. It appears that Bristol grand juries in this period were more willing to indict sectaries than petty juries were to convict them: see BRO, MS 04451–52 (1); Barry, “Politics of Religion,” pp. 167, 182n. 12. There were significant numbers of indictments for religious matters in 1662 and from 1664 on. Indictments for 1661, 1663, and 1667–1675 are missing, but for 1675 see A Sober Answer to the Address of the Grand Jurors (London, 1675). [BACK]

94. PRO, SP 29/110/42. Ironically, the crew members argued that the transportation of these individuals violated the ordinances against spiriting, because there were no indentures and because Barbados had a strict law against those who brought unindentured servants into the colony against their wills: see Acts passed in the Island of Barbadoes, pp. 22–23. [BACK]

99. PRO, PC 2/51/217; BRO, Common Council Proceedings, vol. 6, pp. 108–9. John Knight was joined by eleven others under the order, but despite it only Knight and five more took the oath and sat: see BRO, Common Council Proceedings, vol. 6, pp. 65ff.; PRO, SP 44/13, p. 135, 29/57/41; Latham, ed., Bristol Charters, pp. 40–42, 175–78. [BACK]

100. BRO, Common Council Proceedings, vol. 6, pp. 55, 60, 68, 86, 95, 99, 104, 112, 125; PRO, SP 29/57/55, 29/92/48, 77, 78, 83, 91, 111, 118, 29/93/47, 47i, 69, 29/94/118, 29/96/39. The outcome of the dispute was an order applying the custom of London to Bristol. In London those common councillors with titles enjoyed precedence only when not exercising their public functions or appearing as members of the civic body. In the council and aldermanic meetings they proceeded by seniority of membership. [BACK]

101. See Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, p. 52. [BACK]

108. Hayden, ed., Records, p. 128; Besse, Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 1, pp. 52–53; Mortimer, ed., Minute Book, pp. 33, 40, 102; PRO, SP 29/275/132, 162, 163, 29/276/14, 75, 29/278/149. The king’s order requiring the mayor to be chosen from among the aldermen dates from 7 September 1665: PRO, SP 44/17, p. 134. Yeamans himself appears to have been elected in violation of the order, since he was not an alderman in 1669. The king’s order was to have been read before each election meeting and apparently was read in 1669, but Yeamans omitted to read it in 1670. The election of 1670 was hotly contested, with Mr. Knight winning by two votes over two conservative aldermen, and Sir John Knight moved immediately to quash the election. Having failed to get a Privy Council order soon enough, Sir John had his cousin hauled before the House of Commons. For the aftermath of the election, see PRO, SP 29/278/181, 210, 44/31/61, 29/279/45, 29/288/44; BRO, MS 04447 (1), p. 11; Latimer, Annals, pp. 355–57; Latham, ed., Bristol Charters, 1509–1899, p. 42. [BACK]

109. PRO, SP 29/57/71. Visitation of ships in Cale’s term appears to have begun on 21 April 1662 and to have ended abruptly on 7 July 1662: BRO, MS 04220 (1), ff. 482r–497v. [BACK]

110. BRO, MS 04220 (2), f. 187r. These entries run through 5 October 1672, i.e., they end soon after the installation of Christopher Griffeth as mayor: ibid., f. 231v. [BACK]

111. Olliffe’s year in the mayoralty saw almost as violent persecution as had Sir John Knight’s: see Hayden, ed., Records, pp. 144–70; Mortimer, ed., Minute Book, pp. 99–100. For evidence of the visitation of ships during his term, see BRO, MS 04220 (2), ff. 271v; these entries continue intermittently to the end of the volume in August 1679. Olliffe, an innkeeper and vintner, served as sheriff during Lawford’s term as mayor in 1664–65 and so had good experience of previous persecutions: Beaven, Lists, p. 303. The last days of the Register come at the height of the Exclusion crisis and its bitter aftermath of persecution and factional strife in Bristol: see Latimer, Annals, pp. 388ff.; HMC, The Manuscripts of the Duke of Beaufort, K.G., the Earl of Donoughmore, and Others, p. 101; Barry, “Politics of Religion,” pp. 172–81. These disruptive events may account in part for the apparent breakdown in the enforcement of the servant registration scheme in its last years: see above, Chapter 8, n. 1. In fall 1681 the new mayor of Bristol, Thomas Earle, whom Charles II knighted on 4 December of that year, instituted another vigorous campaign against the conventicles, for which the marquis of Worcester wrote to thank him on the king’s behalf: marquis of Worcester to the marchioness, 17 December 1681, HMC, Manuscripts of the Duke of Beaufort, p. 87. [BACK]